“The man that killed Jaymi was linked to the other women’s deaths as well,” Archer mused. “Only a few of them had a connection to Rafe and his cousins.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t him,” she told Archer. “I don’t know anything more than that. Two weeks after the pharmacy owner came to the house, Jaymi was dead and her killer was dead.”
Archer was silent for long moments. “My dad was sheriff then,” he said. “I asked him about it. He said there were no ties between the cousins and the killer at all. Nothing tied the six women together, and he couldn’t remember seeing the Callahan cousins with any of the women that summer except Jaymi.”
“And everyone wanted so desperately to believe they had killed Jaymi,” Cami said softly. “Archer, didn’t your father ever question any of this?” Archer gave a tight shake of his head. “I argued with him over that at the time. Not that it helped.”
“None of it ties together, no matter how I try to find a way to understand it.” And she needed to understand it.
Archer grunted. “And that’s exactly how their lawyer managed to get the charges dropped,” he reminded her. “The fact that the DNA that came back proved that Thomas Jones was the man Crowe stabbed that night managed to clear them.”
“Yet they’re still treated worse than ra**sts and murderers who admit to their crimes,” she pointed out. “I thought it would get better for them, but in the past twelve years it seems to have only grown worse.”
“It’s easy to blame them,” Archer suggested. “Thomas Jones is dead, and they’re alive.”
Could it possibly be that simple?
It wasn’t enough to satisfy her though, just as she knew she had an ulterior motive. She wanted Rafe. She wanted back in his bed, she wanted to know why she couldn’t forget him, why she ached for him, and that wasn’t going to happen if she wanted to live and work in Sweetrock.
“Thanks for the ride home, Archer,” she said dropping the subject and hoping she had given him enough for him to investigate it as he drew closer to where she lived in her two-story little ranch.
“I’ll call Jack’s Towing before heading back up the mountain,” Archer told her. “He can bring your car in sometime today.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s fine; thank you again.”
She wasn’t going to need it today anyway.
Archer sighed as he turned the car down Main Street and drove closer to the dark, probably cold, and definitely lonely house she had bought from her parents.
It was all she could do to keep from begging him to take her back to Rafer’s. To beg Rafer to hold her just a little while longer. But the fear was like a padlock, locking the words and the ability to reach out to Rafer in such a way deep inside her.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” She rubbed her temple with her fingers, finally glancing at Archer again as she breathed out a hard sigh. “Why did he have to come back, Archer? Why did he have to change everything?”
“He’s not changing anything for you without your help,” Archer said gently. “And from what you just said about Jaymi, you be damned careful. It might be a good idea to be a little cautious for a while.” Archer knew about the nights they had spent together, though he didn’t know about the child she had lost.
A sardonic smile twisted her lips. Hadn’t that been the same advice she had given her sister twelve years before?
“I’ll be sure to do that,” Cami promised as she slid out of the sheriff’s vehicle and closed the door before heading to the house.
She turned and waved good-bye as she stepped into the silent house.
Yes. It was cold. Lonely.
Closing and locking the door behind her, she turned the thermostat up, hoping to alleviate the chill inside her as well as the one that filled her home. She hadn’t really been warm in years, until Rafer had held her again. Now the lack of that warmth was damned painful.
The cell phone rang out its strident ringtone to alert her she had a call. Caller ID was clearly blocked, and until now she didn’t think she’d ever received a blocked call.
“Hello,” she answered cautiously.
The voice, despite its gentle sadness, held a sinister, malicious edge.
“You better hope you spent your time with Rafer Callahan wisely. You should have chosen someone else to dirty yourself with if you needed a hard f**k,” the voice warned her somberly. “If it happens again, you could meet the same end as your sister. Wouldn’t that be a shame, Ms. Flannigan? Wouldn’t it hurt your family, your friends, to find your body broken and discarded for f**king that bastard?”
Who the hell would call and say something so cruel? She and Jaymi had been close, much closer than most sisters with such an age difference between them.
But she remembered the calls Jaymi had received while sleeping with Rafe, and she had once told Cami that the caller’s voice had sounded tearful and filled with regret.
“I’m always careful,” Cami told him quietly, confidently. “And I don’t do bullies. Or cowards.” She disconnected the call quickly, then ignored the next several as she moved back to the kitchen and laid the device on the table. She stood back by the counter and simply watched it as though it were a snake, coiled and hissing as “blocked number” showed on the caller ID again.
As a third-grade teacher for the only elementary school in the county, she ended up meeting most people, whether they were parents or not, more than once. She recognized that voice, even as carefully disguised as it had been.
Still, she would remember whose voice it was, and when she did, unlike her sister, Cami would raise hell and make damned sure he paid for attempting to terrorize her, let alone threatening her.
She knew Jaymi had finally realized who had been calling her. The week before she had died she had attended one of the county-sponsored street dances in the town square, and when she had returned to the apartment she had been more than upset. She had been furious. She hadn’t said she had known, but Cami had known her sister and she had known when the phone rang that night and the look on Jaymi’s face when the caller ID had come up “blocked.” Jaymi had taken the phone to the bedroom, but as she walked into the other room Cami could have sworn she heard Jaymi say, Now I know why you hate him so bad. But Jaymi had refused to tell Cami who it was or what was going on. The next week, Jaymi had been killed.